York

By Pippa

We arrived in York on the 23rd of June to hugs from my brother Tristan. Having not seen him in nine months I was pretty excited. We dropped of our luggage at our apartment/house and went out for a drink. On our way back, while we were walking across the bridge a large group of cyclists biked by. Totally normal, right? well yes, except for the fact that they weren’t wearing any clothes. We later found out that it was the World Naked Bike Ride. The idea is to “protest the vulnerability of cyclists and celebrate the beauty of bikes and the variety of bodies which power them, cleanly and with no fossil fuel carbon emissions.” All I can remember thinking is “Um… Sure why not?” Anyways, after watching the group of cyclists go by we went home. I really like York, it’s a nice place with nice parks.

Last Tuesday we went to meet up with my mom’s uncle Stephen in Scarborough. When we left York it was 29°C and sunny. We crammed into an over packed train and travelled for 45 minutes until we got to Scarborough. Once we got off the train we were greeted by a freezing wind and fog. Obviously I was totally not dressed for cold weather, what with my flip flops, shorts and a short sleeved t-shirt. After lunch we went to the beach, even though we couldn’t see farther than five meters in each direction. The water was quite fresh, too. And even though it was foggy and the water was freezing cold some people still went swimming.

The next day we went to Leeds to meet my mum’s Auntie Diana. Thankfully it was a beautiful day in Leeds, so after some tea we went for a walk in Roundhay Park.

The park was actually the back yard of a really fancy mansion (now a museum).

The park was really nice, and it even had its own cricket ground, although that isn’t too surprising, this is England, after all. After the walk we went for an early supper and met one of my mum’s cousins.

On Thursday we meet up with my great uncle Philip. There’s going to be a lot of meeting people while we’re in England in case you’re wondering. The first thing we did was go for a walk in the York Museum Gardens and saw the ruins of an St. Mary’s Abbey.

Then we went to the Kings Manor, which is now part of the university.

Then we went to York Minster.

I enjoyed walking around York with my great uncle because he knew so much stuff about the history of York.